Skip to main content

Nigeria Chooses a President: Yeltsin or Putin?

Dele Olojede is perhaps the most respected Nigerian journalist working today. He is the publisher and Chief Executive Officer of 234Next newspaper. Before that, he worked with the New York based Newsday newspaper where he rose to the post of Foreign Editor. In 2005, he won the most prestigious journalism award in America, the Pulitzer Prize, for his retrospective on the genocide in Rwanda, a decade after. To cap it all, he is married to the famed former editor of the Guardian, Amma Ogan.

Dele Olojede is perhaps the most respected Nigerian journalist working today. He is the publisher and Chief Executive Officer of 234Next newspaper. Before that, he worked with the New York based Newsday newspaper where he rose to the post of Foreign Editor. In 2005, he won the most prestigious journalism award in America, the Pulitzer Prize, for his retrospective on the genocide in Rwanda, a decade after. To cap it all, he is married to the famed former editor of the Guardian, Amma Ogan.

googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('content1'); });

So when it comes to journalism, Dele Olojede, more than anyone else, knows what he is talking about.
 
On Nov 16, 2007, he had lunch with a staff of the American embassy in Johannesburg, South Africa. The embassy staff asked Olojede what he thought about the political situation in South Africa where President Thabo Mbeki was fighting for his political life against the scandal-ridden Jacob Zuma. Like all good journalists, Olojede opened his big mouth to blab. He dissected the South African situation and authoritatively predicted that President Mbeki “has essentially sewn up the nomination as ANC President.” Jacob Zuma, he told the American, had no chance. He backed up his predictions by flaunting his closeness to South African political and business big wigs.
 
Oh well, it turned out that everything he said was crap - 100% trash. We know this today because his conversation with the embassy staff was documented in U.S. diplomatic cables released by wikileak. In his reaction to the cable report, Mr. Olojede wrote something very profound: “I must confess here that my initial reaction was deep embarrassment at how wrong I was. But then I realized that this was in fact not such a bad or abnormal thing, that most of us make judgments based on information then available to us, colored often by our prejudices and our social networks, and our wishes and hopes and fears.” 
 
I, too, make my judgments based on information available to me. My judgments are colored by my prejudices, my social networks, my wishes, my hopes and my fears. So you can understand why I am not in the business of telling anyone who to vote for. I am not a Nobel laureate. And I am not a prominent columnist. The last time I checked, I have not been able to convince Ogonna, my 4-year-old son, that the Cookie Monster will be better off eating broccoli. So why should I assume that I can persuade intelligent Nigerian adults to vote for a particular candidate?
 
I do know one little thing, though. George Burns, an American comedian once noted something very important about politics. He said, “Too bad all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving cabs and cutting hair.”
 
I, too, have observed the same. The people who know how to run Nigeria are busy writing articles on the World Wide Web. Those who have no interest in writing long pieces are churning out comments after comments. None of them believes that his judgments are based on the information currently available to him. And that it is colored by his prejudices, his social networks, his wishes, his hopes and his fears.
 
In a society where institutions are strong and functioning, it does not matter so much who is president. No matter how bad he is, the president cannot ruin a country in 8 years. George W. Bush tried it in America but failed. And no matter how dumb the citizens of any country are, in 8 years, they will figure out if their president is good or bad.
 
In advanced societies, the president is said to be like the person in the family whose job it is to buy meat in the market. In developing societies like ours, the president is the one with the knife and the fork. He decides who gets the steak and who should get the intestines. That is why whoever becomes the president, in a country like Nigeria, is very important. And that is why the elite, who essentially fill their pockets with loots, do everything to convince the rest of us that their choice of president is the right choice.
 
The elite will throw out pigeons and rabbits from their hats just to make you believe that their candidate is the right candidate. They will point at shipyards their candidate will build even when there is no river, much less an ocean. When that does not work, they will tell you their candidate wears white underwear while the other candidate wears black underwear. If that is not scary enough, they will tell you that, at night, their candidate sings lullabies to little children while the other candidate changes into a witch that inflicts little children with convulsions. These elite sef!
 
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not naïve. I know politicians in the past, like Emperor Bokassa and Idi Amin, have eaten little children. I also know that some, like Governor Godswill Akpabio, are currently eating little children. But you get my drift.
 
Thank God I’m not an elite.
 
Every presidential election encapsulates its time. The options available to the citizens of every country sum up where they are in their political maturity index™. That is why it is often said that every nation deserves the kind of leader it has. An accurate interpretation of these options is therefore more important than the endorsements of any of the potential leaders.
 
In the last exciting election we had in Nigeria, the June 12, 1993 election between Moshood Abiola and Bashir Tofa, the difference between the candidates were clearly defined. I watched the election from London. On the eve of the election, the London Observer stated that Nigerians had two options: “a fool surrounded by idiots or an idiot surrounded by fools.”
 
It makes you wonder, which is which? Never mind! Don’t you hate it when foreigners define our options for us?
 
The presidency of any country presents challenges that no man is ever big enough to solve. The good thing is that the presidency also makes small people big enough to tackle whatever challenges it presents. The opportunity to do great things is always there. The question is whether that particular president will see it and seize it. The president who keeps watch on the silver in his pocket misses what the one who keeps his eyes on the hand of history sees.
 
The two primary candidates in this weekend’s presidential election are President Goodluck Jonathan and former military Head of State, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari. One is Boris Yeltsin and the other is Vladimir Putin. Under Yeltsin, corruption thrived in Russia while the president drank. Under Putin, the Russians drank while the president thrived.
 
If it is possible, before you vote on Saturday, remember Russia under Yeltsin and Russia under Putin. Which of those eras do you wish for Nigeria?
 
Oh, for those looking to vote for Dmitry Medvedev, I say to you, I have looked into his eyes and I was not able to get a sense of his soul.  
 
If I were to vote, I will not pick a bad candidate because others are worse. Like all good journalists, I will pick a candidate who will give me so much stuff to pick on. It will make my job a lot easier.
 
Please correct me if I’m right.

googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('comments'); });

googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('content2'); });